Garage



E. GEIGER Jan. 6, 1931.

GARAGE 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed Feb. 1, 1929 yer ATTORNEY INVENTOR Era Y6Gea' BY Jan. 6, 1931. E. GEIGER 1,788,155

GARAGE Filed Feb. 1, 1929 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 5 20 g as :3 .2! j! NV E NTOREma f age) BY ATTORNEY Patented Jan. 6, 1931 UNITED STATES ERNST GEIGER,OF IRVINGTON, NEW JERSEY GARAGE Application filed February 1, 1929.Serial No. 888,792.

An object of the present invention is to provide a garage in which amaximum number of cars may be stored in a minimum amount of space, and agarage in which the cars may be handled with ease and expedim to providea garage preferably tion of the cubic space content ofthe building.

Preferably I provide any suitable number 7 of endless conveyor elementsmounting temporary car storage cabins. The endless conveyors may beconveniently manipulated to rapidly bring any Storage cabin into carreceiving, or car delivering position.

The endless conveyors and the cabins which they carry preferably travelabout a central space of the building which may be used as a permanentstorage space, and may be horizontally subdivided into any number offloors.

Preferably the cabins of the endless conveyors are roofed over toeffectively prevent a stored car from being soiled by grease drip fromsuperjacent cabins or the well-lubricated conveying. and guidingapparatus above it.

In a preferredembodiment of the Invention, the cars are forwardly drivenin to one side of the storage cabins, rotated partially around thecentral storage space and forwardly driven out of the other side of thestorage cabins. Preferably two road levels are provided, one for drivingin the cars, and the other for driving out the cars. The cabins byproper manipulation of the endless conveyor may be moved into alignmentwith any of the floors of the central storage space, so that cars may bedriven from the cab ns on to-one side of the storage floors, and driveniinto the cabins off the other side of the storage oors.

It is to be noted, however, that while I refer to the use of permanentstorage floors, an important feature of. the invention is the storage ofvehicles in movable storage compartments, or cabins which may beconveniently shifted to some distance from the point of reception ordelivery of the cars, and so constructed that any storage compartmentmay be expeditiously moved to discharging or delivering position at anytime.

The invention may be more fully understood from the followingdescription in connection with the accompanying drawings, wherein:

Figure 1 is. a view in vertical section through a garage embodying thepresent invention.

Figure 2 is a fragmentary vertical sectional view on the line 2-2 ofFig. 1.

Figure 3 is another fragmentary vertical sectional view appoximately onthe line 3-3 of Figure 4.

Figure 4 is a sectional plan view on the 7 line 44 of Figure 3.

It is to be understood that the drawings which form part of thisapplication are illustrative of only one embodiment of the invention,and are by no means to be interso preted in a limiting sense.

In the drawings I have shown a building including side walls 10, a frontwall 11 and aroof 12. A driveway 13 enters the front of the building atthe ground floor thereof and communicates with a downwardly inclinedrunway14 for arriving cars, and an upwardly inclined runwa 15 fordeparting cars. The roadway space etween the two'runways may beconveniently occupied by a building structure such as control house 16housing all of the controls for the motor mechanism to be laterdescribed, and provided with windows 17 through which business may betransacted with the drivers of the cars as they pass down the runway 14on to the receiving floor 18, or as they pass from the superjacentdelivery floor 19 down the runway 15. v

The building space indicated by the reference character 20 at oppositesides of the 10 entering drive 13 and above the drive, may beconveniently used for ofiice space or as a permanent storage space forcars, as will be later understood.

At each side of the building there is provided a vertical shaftway 21,and in these mounted on common horizontal bearing shafts or axles 26journalled or keyed near the top of the building. The chains also runover idler sprockets 27 j ournalled on shafts 28 immediately below thereceiving floor 18. Suitable space is provided at 29 in the top of thebuilding and at 30 below the street level in the bottom of the buildingfor the passage of the storage cabins from one shaftway 21 to the other.

The cabins in their travel thus pass completely around a central spacewhichis preferably vertically divided into a number of floors 31 uponwhich cars may be stored for relatively long periods of time. As bestseen in Fig. 3, the receiving and delivery floors 18 andl9, and also allof the storage floors 31 above them communicate by doorways 32 withtheshaftways 21 so that by horizontally aligning the cabins 23 with anyfloor, a car may be driven from the cabin on to the floor at one side ofthe building or from the floor on to the cabin at the other side of thebuilding.

Obviously, some means, must be provided for guiding the movement of theendless co'nveyors and the cabins whichthey carry fromone shaftway tothe other. In the upper space the large s rocket wheels 25 are ofsufficien't size to e ect the transfer from one shaftway to the other,their diameters equalling the distance between the center of oneshaftway and the center of the other shaftway.

In passing through the lower space at 30, the sprocket chains travelbetween pairs of arcuate guide rails 33.- Preferably each endlessconveyor assembly includes two conveyor chains 24 and cross rods 34which connect the chains, and from which the cabins are hung for freeswinging movement. The weight of the cabins will tend to retain them inhorizontal position as they are transferred from one shaftway to theother, either ,between sprocket wheels 25 or under the guides 33.

Numerous expedients might be resorted to for properly driving thesprocket wheels 25. I prefer to employ driving gears 35 keyed to turnwith the sprocket wheels and driven by worms 36 carried by shafts 37which are journalled in suitable bearing hangers 37 a. Shaft 37 may bedriven through any suit- -wheels by a common bearing means embody aceiling 40, floor 41, and a central horizontal partition 42 whichdivides the cabins into upper and lower storage compartments 43. I amthus able to effect considerable space economy as will be laterexplained without rendering the cabins too large for convenientmanipulation by the conve ors.

Prime considerations in this type 0 structure are the eflicient,expeditious handling of cars and the economy of space, primarily spacein a horizontal direction, but more generally the most eflicientutilization of the cubic contents of the building.

The factors which determine efiicient space utilization for any givenheight of building of the generalcharacter-described above are (1) thewidth of the car receiving and delivery floors, (2) the spacing of thecar handlin cabins on the endless chain, (3) the 'num r of cars carriedby a cabin, and (4) the mounting of the sprocket wheels which transferthe cabins from one shaftway to the other..

Considering first the width of the car receivingfloors, these floorsmust be sufiiciently wide so that a car driven in from one end of thegarage may be turned and driven ahead into a waitingstorage cabinwithout any backing or maneuvering which would delay car handling.Similarly a car should be driven out onto the delivery floor and swungaround towardthe exit without any jockeymg or gear-shifting. With thisin mind the width of the floors must be at least once and a half as longas the standard or. average length of the cars to be handled and bearingin mind the unskillfulness of some drivers, the floors should be twiceas wide as the length of a car to assure efiicient and expeditiousdriving of a car into its receiving cabin. Inasmuch as the cabin depthis just suflicient to acco1nmo date a standard-sized car, the floorwidthmay be considered in terms of cabin depths rather than car lengthsand is equal to from once and a half to twice such depth, in accordancewith a preferred embodiment of the invention.

The mounting of the sprocket wheels is of importance from the standpointof space economy, in that an attempt to mount these wheels on stub shats would involve loss of space between adjacent shaftways, since' thestub shafts would have to run well back and even then would take thetremendous strain on the wheels very inefliciently. A preferred methodof overcomingthis is to connect the shaft or axle which requiresrelatively shallow bearings in the shaftway walls. This axle, however,immediately creates a necessity for using cabins of a height which isless than the radius of the wheels if the cabins are hung from theirtops on the chains, since otherwise the cabins would strike the axle asthey were transferred.

The shortest distance between the adjacent cabins on a chainisproportional to the diameter of the sprocket wheel. These cabins mightbe spaced quite closely together on a very large wheel and would have tobe spaced very far apart if a relatively small wheel were used fortransfer purposes due to interference between the cabins in making thesharp turn around the wheel.

'Eflicient utilization of the space on the chain requires cabinshorizontally subdivided into the greatest number of car compartmentspossible. Bearing these size-controlling factors in mind, it may be seenthat the present arrangement affords substantially 100% efiicient spaceutilization.

Duplex cabins are used of a horizontal cross-section closelyapproximating the length and width of a standard-sized car, onlysuflicient excess width being present to permit the egress and ingressof a driver. The height of each cabin compartment is approximately thatof a standard-sized car. The space between shaftways is equal toapproximately twicethe length of a stand- 'ard-sized car wherebyconvenient emplacement and removal of the cars is permitted and theradius of the sprocket wheel is some 1 what greater than the height of atwo-compartment cabin, but insufficient to permit the use of pendentthree-compartment cabins.

An attempt to vary these proportions immediately results in eitherwasting space or making it extremely diflicult to maneuver the cars.

For example, if the width of the receiving and delivery floors weredecreased, car maneuvering would become more difiicult and the decreasedsize of the sprocket wheel would necessitate a greater spacing betweenthe cabins of the chain and a consequent reduction in the number of carswhich could be carried by a single length of chain. If these floors werenarrower sufliciently, pendent duplex cabins could not be used at alland further reduction in the car carrying ca acity of the chain wouldresult.

y increasing the size of the sprocket wheel in order to shorten thenecessary distance between the cabins of the chain, the width of, thecar receiving and delivery floors would be increased and the increasedspace would be essentially waste. More roadway would be provided than isrequired for convenient maneuvering. The increase in the storage floorarea would be a negligible factor in most installations since thesestorage floors take care ofonly emergency congestion or permanentlystored cars and the illustrated arrangement gives considerably more deadstora e space than is usuall required;

If the ca ins were cut in half orizontally to provide single instead ofduplex carriers it will be perfectly obvious that the total car carryingcapacity of the chain would be decreased.

Increasing the height of pendent cabins by making them of the triplextype would necessitate a material increase in the diameter of thesprocket wheels so that such cabins could clear the sprocket wheelaxles. Here again there would be a corresponding needless increase inthe width of the space between shaftways.

From the foregoing discussion it will be evident that in a garage ofthis character most efiicient space utilization is accomplished byspacing the two shaftways apart a distance equal to from one andone-half to tw'ce the depth of a cabin, by using pendent duplex cabinsof a height approxlmately equal to twice the height of a car and byusing sprocket wheels mounted on a common connective shaft the diameterof which wheels is equal to the distance between the center of oppositeshaftways and the radius of which is somewhat greater than the heght ofthe suspended duplex cabins to be handled. It is understood of coursethat the cabins are arranged as closely to each other as possible on thechain, the controlling factor here being the clearance necessary betweencabins when they pass around the sprocket wheel.

Any attempt to depart from the relative proportions above specifiedresults in either waste of space at the car handling floors or theimpedance of convenient car manipulation.

The vital importance of expeditious car parking and expeditious cardelivery may be clearly demonstrated by considering the ac tualoperating conditions in a 600 car garage. "With such garages located inan office district they will ordinarily be completely filled within thespace of a couple of hours in the morning, which means that cars must bereceived at the rate of one every ten to thirty seconds. The congestionwhich would be caused by narrow receiving floors will be apparent. Onthe other hand, the delivery of cars must be correspondingly rapidduring the evening rush hour. From which it will be immediately obviousthat the amount of so-called live or cabin storage space is of far moreimportance than the (leader floor storage space.

Assuggested above, there is preferabl a set of suitable controlmechanisms not il ustrated, housed within the building structure 16, andwith such control mechanism any one of the sets of endless conveyors maybe manipulated to align either compartment of any cabin with either sideof any floor. The

cabins are open at both sides, and as best seen in Fig. 1, the cars aredriven into the cabins at one side and driven out of the cabins at theother side after the cabins have been shifted from one shaftway to theother.

A great many cars may be expeditiously handledby the use of the separatereceiving and delivery levels. The cabins will of course be numbered.The owner when calling for his car will present a ticket indicating theparticular cabin number within which his car is stored, and the operatormay shift one of the sets of endless conveyors in their direct on tobring this cabin most expeditiously into alignment with the deliveryfloor 19.

tion of stored cars, or for any other purpose, is of course a matter tobe decidedin the case of each garage structure, and will depend upon therequirements of the trade.

The device of the present invention may be built as an addition toapartment houses and may be constructed in numerous ways other than thatshown. In some instances the cabins serve as elevators rather than asstorage compartments, but in a preferred embodiment of the invention thecabins are used for storing and not merely for transporting thevehicles.

Var.ous changes and alterations might be made in the general form andarrangement of parts described without departing'from the invention.Hence I do not wish to limit myself to the details set forth, but shallconsider myself at liberty to make such changes and alterations asfairly fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.

\Vhat I claim is:

1. In, a garage structure pairs of spaced vertical shaftways, spacedupper and lower crossway-s connecting them, pairs 9f spaced wheels inthe upper crossway of a' diameter substantially equaY to the distancebetween centers of the opposite shaftways, an axle connecting them,pairs of spaced endless flexible devices running through the shaftwaysand crossways and over the wheels, car storage cabins hung between theflexible devices and carried thereby, each cabin being horizontallysub-divided to provide a plurality of car compartments of a width anddepth to conveniently accommodate an average sized car, the radius ofthe wheels exceeding the combined height of the number of compartmentsused but being less than the combined height of a greater number ofcompartments of similar size, and a car handling floor between theshaftways.

2. In a garage structure pairs of vertical shaftways, spaced upper andlower crossways connecting them, pairs of spaced guide wheels in theupper cross-way of a diameter substantially equal to the distancebetween centers of the opposite shaftways, pairs of spaced endlessflexible devices running t rough the shaftways and crossways and overthe wheels, car storage elements hung between the flexible devices andcarried thereby, each element including spaced, superimposed rigidlyconnected car receiving platforms of a. widthand depth to convenientlyaccommodate an average sized car, and superimposed landing and loadingfloors associated with a shaftway.

3. In a garage structure, pairs of spaced vertical shaftways, spacedupper and lower crossways connecting them, pairs of spaced sprocketwheels in the upper crossway of a diameter substantially equal to thedistance Whether the space between the shaftways is used as an airshaftor for the accommodabetween centers of the opposite shaftways, pairs ofspaced endless chains running through the shaftways and crossways andover the sprocket wheels, car storage cabins hung between the chains andcarried thereby, each cabin being horizontally sub-divided'to provide aplurality of car compartments of a width and depth to convenientlyaccommodate an average sized car, the radius of the sprocket wheelsexceeding the combined height of the compartments, a car handling floorextending approximately from shaftway to shaftway and being of a .widthfrom approximately one and one-half to two times the depth of a cabin.

4. In a garage structure pairs of spaced, vertical shaftways, spacedupper and lower crossways connecting them, pairs of spaced sprocketwheels in the upper crossway of a diameter substantially equalto thedistance between centers of the opposite shaftways, pairs of spacedendless chains running through the shaftways and crossways and over thesprocket wheels, car storage cabins hung between the chains and carriedthereby. each cabin being horizontally sub-divided to provide a pair ofcar comparti'nents of a width and depth to coveniently accommo-' date anaverage sized car, the radius of the sprocket the wheels exceeding thecoi'nbined height of two compartments, :1 car handling floor extendingapproximately from shaftway to shaftway and being ofa width fromapproximately one and one-half to two times the depth of a cabin, saidcar handling floor communicating at one end with the exterior of thestructure.

5. In a garage structure pairs of spaced vertical shaftsways, spacedupper and lower crossways connecting them, pairs of spaced sprocketwheels in the upper crossway of a diameter substantially equal to thedistance and depth to conveniently accommodate an average sized car, theradius of the sprocket wheels exceeding the combined height of twocompartments, superimposed car delivery and receiving floors arrangedbetween the shaftways and communicating with the exterior of thebuilding through one end of the latter, said storage compartments beingopen at both ends whereby a car may be driven ahead into a compartmentat the receiving floor and driven ahead out of the compartment at thedelivery floor after the compartment has been carried in a partiallyorbital path from one shaftway to the other.

Signed at New York, in the county of New York and State of New York this28th day of January A. D. 1929.

ERNST GEIGER

